Was BLM not enough?

[Aidorouge]

See, the thing is, when we had 60 levels as our cap, but 30ish actions to learn to fill our bars with, it necessitated a lot more actions being learned in the 1-50 section of levelling. With the level cap being 100 now, but the same 30ish button limit, there's more focus on making the endgame feel like you're learning new things a lot (every 2 levels), which results in the early game for some jobs feeling empty. WHM, in particular, has an entire 12 level section of levelling where the only thing they learn is a trait that increases their damage by 10% passively. Look at something like RPR, or VPR, where their Enshroud/Reawaken, the core thing the Job is built around, doesn't unlock until 80/90 respectively, resulting in any gameplay below those levels feeling pretty bad by comparison. At least PCT gets to have Hammer and 2 of the 4 Mog/Madeen Muses (plus the Mog itself) at lower levels

This could be addressed somewhat by having lower level versions of actions, which later upgrade. For example, we were just given 'Plenary Indulgence now grants 10% mitigation effect' in this patch. Okay, that's cool. Why not have Protect come back at like, level 8 or 10, as a lower level version that only does the Mit, and not the bonus healing effect, which then upgrades to Plenary later whereupon it gains the bonus heal effect? Why not have Divine Seal return at level 40ish for WHM, providing a % increase to Healing Actions under its duration, which then upgrades later to Temperance, at which point it gains Mitigation in addition to the % Healing increase effect (causing Temperance to function as it now does)?

I assume they removed buttons because it "interfered" with combat design, and adding buttons back would mean having to revise said fights. For whatever reason, Square-Enix wants buttons presses minimized/focus on hotbars reduced for when they want people to dance around floor barf and be paying more attention to which side of their butt the boss is scratching to know where an attack is going to land.

They're unlikely to give back all those DOTs unless it comes with the caveat that the boss no longer makes you do anything that requires you to move around. In fact, that might even be WHY they changed it.

"Stacking DOTs and standing around sounds boring, let's make the player scurry and scatter instead." It's quite possibly the same logic they apply to healers in general. "Just spam your quick-healing/AOEs and let the tank help carry that load, you don't have time to cast or think, just MOVEMOVEMOVE."

Hell, nearly every job change can be zeroed down to those points: Does it interfere with mobility/take away the player's attention from the boss when they start casting? If yes, straight to the chopping block it goes. And it makes an unfortunate amount of sense because as someone else said, it's easier to balance fights around 5 roles (or 5 roles around fights rather) than 21 jobs. I'm curious if role quests dropped in the same expansion that Square-Enix started pushing jobs into those less than half a dozen boxes.